Page 8 of Malice

After the guards at the main gates wave me on, I try my best to drown this feeling in the sea breeze. The coastal landscape of green earth and craggy rock has always been a refuge for me. Out here, there are no Graces or patrons or house standings. Only the Carthegean Sea swallowing the horizon, a depthless azure that stretches all the way to realms I’ve only read about.

Sometimes Laurel jokes that I would be a wisdom Grace if my blood was gold, for I devour every atlas and geography text I can get my hands on. According to those books, Briar is the smallest realm in the world. We’ve only the Grace and Common districts and a smattering of homesteads outside the main walls. Other realms boast a seemingly endless expanse of villages and cities and landmarks. I remember tracing my fingertips along the ribbons of blue marking the rivers. Measuring the lakes with the pad of my thumb. Connecting the dots denoting the towns like constellations, testing their names on my tongue and imagining what the citizens living within those places might look like or sound like or believe. In Tyrna, a landlocked queendom ten times our size, they worship dozens of goddesses. One for every season and emotion and aspiration. In Cardon, the small island now governed by several influential families, decisions are made by debating and casting votes. And then there are the tantalizing, undiscovered places just waiting to be explored.

A bell rings in the distant harbor, where Briar’s great ships are moored and swaying on the waves. High on their masts, golden flags emblazoned with the Briar rose snap and ripple in the wind. From their bows jut dragon heads, an homage to Leythana, their jaws wide and grinning. As if the creatures cannot wait to be untethered and set loose on the sea.

Not for the first time, I wonder what it would be like to be aboard one of those ships. To feel the scrape of the salt wind on my cheeks, nothing but ocean in front of me. To see the glimmer of the palace fade behind me forever. To never hear the wordsDark Graceuttered again.

But the Grace Laws forbid any Grace from leaving Briar, even after she’s Faded. The Crown does not want other realms accessing a Grace’s blood, golden or silvered, on the chance that the Etherian magic could be used against us. The Grace Council went so far as to train packs of hunting dogs to sniff out Grace blood. Each ship is searched before it leaves port. Any Grace found belowdecks is severely punished.

But I am not a Grace.The thought flames hot. I smother it.

Beyond the harbor, heat undulates against the Crimson Cliffs. With sea-slicked rocks the color of wet mortal blood, the cliffs are named for the time before Briar existed, when the light Fae used the power in their staffs to summon squalls and tidal waves to shove back the human ships that dared trespass, sending them to shatter against the garish rocks as if they were no more than wooden playthings. It’s said that the seabed around the cliffs is nothing but bones and rusted swords and ghostly hulls.

A shiver races between my shoulder blades.

Once Leythana was crowned, the realms across the Carthegean Sea didn’t dare antagonize the ruler who’d won the Etherians’ challenge and earned the Fae alliance. And, centuries later, none want to jeopardize their stake in the Etherium trade by souring their relationship with Briar.

But wealth is the only legacy Leythana left behind.

As her reputation was enough of a deterrent, Leythana waged no wars against invaders. Even so, she and her early descendants built up a formidable army and navy—the envy of the world, if the stories are true. But as time passed, the warrior queens softened. They saw little use for a strong defense when the Etherium was security enough against any foreign threat, so the military funds were diverted to tasks such as beautifying the Grace District and constructing a new palace. And worse, the queens began carving up the hard-won power Leythana bequeathed to her descendants. Slice after slice of royal authority was served to their greedy husbands, who turned a blind eye to the growing hunger of the Common District and the unchecked depravity of the nobles. Our current queen is nearly powerless next to her husband, King Tarkin. Though she’s the heir of the most powerful woman in the world, Mariel is hardly more than a figurehead. A mere dragon on a bowsprit—hollow on the inside.

What would Leythana think now, if she could glimpse the future her efforts had wrought?

I think she would burn it all down.

CHAPTER FIVE

The robin’s eggs are easy enough to find, though the hunt takes me farther away from Briar’s outer walls than I’ve been in a while. I don’t mind the extra time away from the Grace District. Callow agrees, ruffling her feathers and letting out a satisfied shriek. She hates the Lair as much as I do. When I’d first found my kestrel on these cliffs, my heart broke at the thought of someday setting her free. Lavender House is not equipped with a mews, and I am untrained in falconry. But as she healed, it became clear that Callow would not be returning to the sky. One of her wings was too badly injured. And so she remains with me, denied the freedom that is hers by right. A gull calls overhead as if mocking her. Talons needle into the flesh beneath my gown.

“Don’t listen,” I tell her. “We have each other.”

As much as I enjoy visiting Hilde, I’ve always preferred fetching my own enhancements to buying them. When I first began practicing my gift, I devised physical challenges for myself as a distraction from the loneliness I experienced within the walls of Lavender House. They started small, with scaling trees and balancing on boulders. Then I started pushing myself to reach even the highest nest within the spindliest branches, where the elusive, dark-mottled eggs of a carrion crow waited, or wriggling into the narrowest burrow to scavenge weasel whiskers and discarded badger claws. I almost never lost this game, no matter how impossible the errand.

But the robins’ laying season is nearly done. Rose would have to make do with just two of the bright-blue eggshells. Once I pack the fragile things away, I stretch my arms over my head and breathe deeply, letting the briny, humid air warm me inside and out. I wish I could listen to the sea from my attic room in Lavender House. There all I can hear is shouting and wheels against stone. The bustle of the servants and Rose’s grating laughter.

A familiar shape in the distance catches my eye. Perched high on the sea cliffs, it might look at first like nothing more than a mountain of rubble stacked in the vague shape of a castle’s tower. But I know the story. It’s a relic of early Briar. Not of the original palace—those ancient bones still stand beside the new monstrosity. This structure was built before there were Grace and Common districts. Possibly before even the main walls were constructed—during the years in which Leythana and her first heirs allowed their subjects to settle wherever they chose. It must have been a wealthy home, if the surviving tower is only a piece of it. But it was built too close to the cliff’s edge and, over the centuries, the strong sea squalls from Briar’s coast began to chip it apart, stone by stone. It’s been abandoned for generations. Uninhabitable, except by the ghosts said to haunt its hollow halls.

Ghosts.Ridiculous.

Still, I’ve always felt a strange pull to the place. How fitting would it be, the Dark Grace living in the wretched castle tower? Not that I’d ever be allowed to leave Lavender House before my gift ran out. But once it does, the Grace Council has to grant me lodging somewhere. Out here, I’d never have to worry about visitors again. It’s a sweet enough thought to have me checking the angle of the sun. Calculating how long it would take for me to get to the tower and back. And then I’m on my way toward the ruins.

—

Clumps of trees patch the landscape, their roots clinging to the cliffside like giant spider’s legs. Their branches provide only the barest shade to combat the heat of the sun. Gulls call back and forth overhead, riding a sticky, slow-moving breeze that does little to circulate the cottony air. Before I’m halfway to the tower, my dress is plastered to my skin. Sweat beads down my neck and across my back. The sack filled with Rose’s order is heavier with each step.

But the trip to the ruins is worth it. Just before the earth drops away, the black tower staggers into the sky on its wobbly legs. Pieces of the roof have fallen off or caved in. Black vines snake in and out of broken windows like the arteries of some gargantuan creature. I love it.

The door is the only part of the tower still relatively intact. It’s made of oak, with various crests and patterns I don’t recognize carved into the silty surface. I set my sack down and transfer Callow—who has much to say about being left behind—to a fallen log nearby and secure her jesses to a limb. And then it takes three hard shoves of my unhappy shoulder to get the door to give. The rusted hinges scream an iron-laced peal. Even then, I achieve only a hands-breadth sliver of space between the door and the frame. I suck in my breath and angle myself through.

The chamber within might as well be a tomb. A crumbling stone staircase hobbles up the side of one curved wall. Judging from the mezzanines, the structure has three floors, their railings furry with moss and draped with cobwebs. Tattered banners still hang from the beams, the shredded hems billowing in the sea breeze. And there’s a perpetual echo of the roar of the ocean, which is plainly visible through a wide, gaping hole in the far wall, where a hall must once have connected the tower to the rest of the manor.

Movement to my far right snags my attention, coupled with a sound too heavy to be a rat or a snake. It seems I’m not the only one who thought the black tower looked inviting.

“Who’s there?” I fight to keep the tremor out of my voice. I have no elixir ready to use in my defense. Even if I did, the Grace Laws forbid it. And the people of Briar would string me up if I harmed one of their own. I’d be at the bottom of the sea before sunset.

I squint in the gloom and take one step forward. Two. I think I can make out the shape of hunched shoulders. The sheen of dark eyes.

“Please.” The voice is raspy, as if it hasn’t been used in some time. It’s a man’s, I think. And the accent is strange. Clipped and clean despite the scrape of gravel in it. Perhaps even foreign. “I mean you no harm.”